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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Student Loan Debt Hell: Statistics That May Make You Rethink College

Not that I would have done anything differently with my education, but knowing this information I may have done things just a lil bit differently

Since 1978, the cost of college tuition in the United States has gone up by over 900 percent.

In 2010, the average college graduate had accumulated approximately $25,000 in student loan debt by graduation day.

Approximately two-thirds of all college students graduate with student loans.

Americans have accumulated well over $900 billion in student loan debt. That figure is higher than the total amount of credit card debt in the United States.

According to very extensive research detailed in a new book entitled “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses”, 45 percent of U.S. college students exhibit “no significant gains in learning” after two years in college.

Today, college students spend approximately 50% less time studying than U.S. college students did just a few decades ago.

50% of U.S. college students have never taken a class where they had to write more than 20 pages.

U.S. college students spend 24% of their time sleeping, 51% of their time socializing and 7% of their time studying.

Nearly half of all the graduate science students enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States are foreigners.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for college graduates younger than 25 years old was 9.3 percent in 2010.

One-third of all college graduates end up taking jobs that don’t even require college degrees.

In the United States today, over 18,000 parking lot attendants have college degrees.

In the United States today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees.

In the United States today, approximately 365,000 cashiers have college degrees.

Once they get out into the “real world”, 70% of college graduates wish that they had spent more time preparing for the “real world” while they were still in school.

Approximately 14 percent of all students that graduate with student loan debt end up defaulting within 3 years of making their first student loan payment.

Words to Live by:

"Invictus" (Latin for "unconquered")
by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.